That’s amazing ...

The bullet sponge is over, *visually*, which works. Bosses still have tons of hp (or it wouldn’t be bosses), but instead of displaying all hps, their bars simply don’t go down until you destroy their (hidden) hp overload. Instead it just displays a broken shield icon when you hit, which feels less frustrating.

5 hours in, level 15 with a friend, a bit solo, and it’s indeed excellent. Everything is pinpoint : gameplay, ambience, music (omg the music ... I’d listen to this on Spotify anytime), openness, tactics, gearing, coordination, world dynamics, exploring, .... everything.

I totally agree on this, the “influencer effect” is a real problem both for products and global consumer intelligence. That’s why I like Kotaku, they’ve detached from this a long time ago (ditching a global game score, writing deep insight articles, etc). PCGamesN, Polygon, Rock Paper Shotgun are kinda like that…

Except for the animation transition, all mentionned points are crucial to how the game *feels*. Hence how the game is *enjoyed*. The worst thing is how keeping them would not have hindered game quality at all, it would even have been the opposite. So bacisally we’re here with another E3 scam. (except maybe fort tarsis…

“notice me senpai”

Just stay inside, wait for opponents to come in, profit ;)

There aren’t these much heroes, so we need them all :p
(btw Gibraltar / Caustic pls)

• Maybe next game I’ll get partners with an IQ over 50 who don’t decide to land near 4 other teams and die in 1 minute

What I can’t understand tho, is how one 500$ gambler can find more interest in basically putting 500$ into trash than offering himself tons of potential *concrete* videogame related stuff.

Something must really be understood by gamers about the scam that is “game as service”. A game as service is the promise of evolving to be the game you want. Except once released, a game is either what you wanted, either will never be for years, for a simple reason :

Phantasy Star II had such an effect on me as a kid, and on a friend who played aswell ... Everything was simple, efficient, story was not in-your-face like most RPGs (even like PS4, if you ask me).

btw thank you for your professionalism Jason, awesome article as always.
Maybe it could be updated with Ythisens reaction on Twitter (WoW CM), as it’s filled with honesty :

I’m no morphopsychologist (the job of guessing a set of psychological traits based on manners, gesture behaviours, or physical marks over time). But that photo of Bobby Kotick insanely illustrates the article.

“In the Playstation 1 port of Doom, the ouch face commonly occurs when the player takes damage from behind. “

This was a very good discussion. I was surprised to recognize my own thoughts as a long-time game consumer in most of the points. I hope they’ll listen :)

Gameplay (at least for me) felt way more different once ingame than while just watching vids. There’s something to feel.

Played 5 hours straight today after watching a twitcher and say to myself “why not”. All I can say is I’m super satisfied and hyped af. Movement is awesome, gameplay is dynamic, available customizations promised very different tactics, scenery is huge and beautiful, and there’s this sense of freedom overall that makes…

Awesome, honest, concise writing as always Cecilia.
I was talking with a friend of mine about this serious lack of “third places” like we used to have “before”. There’s just none of that now. Most games prefer to capitalize either on 1 ) a casual adrenaline rush 2) a grinding scheme. Where did the passion go ? this…

What’s funny is that as a westerner, I’ll suggest (or naturally position myself as) all examples mentionned in the article. They have not even been taught to me, it all comes, I don’t know, as natural. I don’t know if I would do them as gladly if they were kinda “forced” to me tho ...